THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

In today’s episode, economist Paul Krugman lays out an expansive case that Donald Trump holds a losing hand in the war with Iran. Krugman argues that Trump can’t seem to admit that the Strait of Hormuz problem has cornered him. Krugman also details why the situation could get worse, if Iran continues holding out and constraints on oil supply drive the global economy into recession. As Krugman puts it, this will keep getting uglier for Trump until he “swallows his pride” and accepts that he doesn’t hold the cards. This builds on the piece Krugman posted on his Substack arguing that time is on Iran’s side. Gas prices just hit a new high, and Republicans quietly fear their midterm prospects are darkening due to what Trump has unleashed. Krugman takes us through these dynamics, notes that Trump is obsessing over his ballroom in search of a win, and explains why this all could tailspin further for the GOP. 

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Republicans are blaming Democratic rhetoric for inciting the alleged assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. To that end, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt unleashed tirades at journalists that were soaked in MAGA derangement. One cultishly lionized Trump as a “fearless president” for standing up to “bullets” while absurdly accusing the media and Democrats of “11 years” of “hateful” and “violent” speech about Trump. The other tore into Democrats and the media for daring to point out that Trump poses an “existential threat to democracy,” as if that’s not rooted in his actual conduct, which it is. Yet if anything, the media has not sufficiently conveyed the threat Trump poses. We talked about this disconnect with Matt Gertz of Media Matters, who’s been writing well about the absurdity of inviting Trump to the press dinner.  We discuss the danger Trump poses for press freedom, why the media struggles to report on the threat despite being a target, why time is running out to get this right, and how Democrats should proceed now.

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Donald Trump has been losing like crazy. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. The Supreme Court struck down his tariffs and his birthright citizenship arguments tanked. He's losing the redistricting wars. And the Justice Department dropped its prosecution of Fed chair (and Trump nemesis) Jerome Powell amid cringeworthy circumstances. The latter is humiliating: DOJ insiders are now leaking that they’re really ramping up the prosecution of his enemies now, by golly! But those prosecutions will likely keep failing—as they already have—and all this reveals is desperation to show MAGA that this appalling corruption will ultimately bear fruit. White House spin on this is embarrassingly geared towards lifting the ailing despot’s spirits. We talked to Zeteo reporter Asawin Suebsaeng. We discuss why MAGA-world can’t permit any acknowledgement of Trumpian fallibility, why Trump’s authoritarianism and incompetence go hand in hand, and why Republicans will pay an electoral price for helping sustain the cult of Trump. 

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A new Fox News poll contains crushing findings for Donald Trump. His approval on the economy is at 34 percent with 66 percent disapproving. On inflation, those numbers are even worse, at 28-72. Importantly, the poll also finds Democrats with the advantage on the economy for the first time in years—a milestone. Meanwhile, Trump advisers are feverishly trying to hatch a new midterm strategy. And top GOP senators tell Politico that Trumpworld is bracing for more purges of senior officials, with one senator confiding about Trump: “He’s in a bad mood, so he’s letting a lot of them go.” We talked to G. Elliott Morris, author of the great Strength in Numbers Substack, who just released his own poll. He explains what all the numbers are really telling us, why Trump has long been weaker than the punditry allows, and what must happen now for Democrats to win the House and Senate. 

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After Democrats narrowly passed a mid-decade redistricting in Virginia, Donald Trump erupted in fury on Truth Social. He slammed the result as rigged (of course), lied about the voting in it, and most important, openly called on the courts to step nullify it. But some Republicans are admitting the truth: This debacle is Trump’s fault. He initiated a redistricting arms race that now backfired spectacularly. Yet there’s a lesson in this madness: Trump-GOP cheating becomes a lot harder when Democrats fight it with scorched earth politics. We talked to Brian Beutler, who has argued well on his Off Message Substack that Democrats must get better at hard-edged politics in coming years. We discuss the deeper reasons that Democrats made a stand this time, how Trump revealed vulnerability to counter-hardball politics, and how this should shape future Democratic efforts at post-Trump accountability and fascism-proofing the system. 

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President Trump keeps boasting that a deal with Iran is at hand. But now officials leaked word to CNN that Trump’s public posturing has hurt the negotiations. One noted that by “negotiating through social media,” Trump implied Iran had agreed to things “they hadn’t yet agreed to,” complicating the talks. That’s humiliating, given Trump’s bragging of success. Meanwhile, in two cult-like tirades, Karoline Leavitt attacked the media for being insufficiently worshipful of Trump, and gushed over his greatness with extraordinary sycophancy. Can any good outcome be envisioned here? We talked to former National Security Council veteran Emily Horne. She explains why Leavitt's spin is so absurd, why this fiasco is so hard for Trump to extricate himself from, why there may be no good options ahead, and what it means that Trump has indefinitely extended the ceasefire, which he announced while we were recording. 

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On Monday, Donald Trump exploded in telling tirades. In one, he raged that he (just he) is winning the war “BY A LOT” and bizarrely stressed that “I’m in charge!” In another, he emphasized that he feels “under no pressure whatsoever” to reach a deal with Iran. Why is Trump so fearful of appearing to lose control? Well, The Wall Street Journal has a striking new report relating that gas prices and the war recently had the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis “looming large in his mind. He’s “grappling behind the scenes with just how badly things could go wrong.” In short: He fears looking like Jimmy Carter as the midterms approach. Indeed, Politico reports that prices have some Republicans sounding “alarm bells” about this fall. We talked to The Lever’s David Sirota, narrator of the “Master Plan” podcast, whose new season focuses on the hyper-powerful presidency. We discuss Trump’s growing fears that events are slipping from his grasp, how this is rooted paradoxically in his assertion of an imperial presidency, how decades of failure led to this moment, and how Democrats can run against his imperial rule. 

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Donald Trump just erupted at MAGA allies for opposing his war. In one tirade, he attacked Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and others as “FAKE MAGA.” In another, he slammed them as “Low IQ.” Similarly, his pollster, John McLaughlin, claimed the MAGA base “doesn’t consider” those critics “conservative” anymore. So disagreeing with Trump intrinsically makes you non-MAGA? This reveals Trump believes MAGA is whatever he says it is at any given moment—that Trump and his pollster really do view MAGA as a cult. We’ve written about this dynamic before, but decided it was worth a pod episode. So we talked to New Republic staff writer Perry Bacon, author of a great piece on Trump and the global right. We discuss why Trump’s international and domestic allies are deserting him, how his excommunication of top MAGA figures is shrinking the movement, why Trump believes he can control the minds of his voters, and why all this could hurt GOP chances of holding the Senate. 

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In today’s episode, George Conway argues that as improbable as it might seem right now, congressional Republicans will ultimately decide they have no choice but to remove Donald Trump from office before his term ends. Conway, the former GOP lawyer-turned-Trump-critic, is running for Congress as a Democrat. One of his ads is a montage of all the horrors that Trump has unleashed, followed by Conway’s promise to be a different kind of Congressman in response. In our conversation, Conway explains why he thinks Republicans will eventually decide Trump has to go and talks about how he’ll push for impeachment immediately if elected. Conway also lays out an accountability agenda that includes impeaching many cabinet officials, criminal referrals for high-level Trump administration officials, and extensive other reforms designed to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. 

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Donald Trump’s war on Pope Leo is worsening. JD Vance warned that the Pope, who condemned Trump’s war on religious grounds, should “be careful” in his theology. Mike Johnson dismissed the Pope’s criticisms by bizarrely invoking Just War Doctrine, which Trump and Pete Hegseth are serially violating. All this reveals Trump to be demanding that his leading sycophants (even devoutly religious ones) place him above the Pope—and indeed that they recognize no higher allegiance than to the president. Meanwhile, The New York Times has an epic piece on his mental decline, which reports that many ex-allies are sounding the alarm, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to numerous top first-term advisers. We talked to former national security official Olivia Troye, who just announced a run for Congress. She recounts what she witnessed first-hand about Trump’s unfitness, why his enablers are much worse this time around, and how his madness is now impacting Americans’ everyday lives.

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